


Butterfly Bandages

by thunderbottle



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: (probably), Blood, Caretaking, Crying, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Minor Character Death, Name Reveal, Out of Character, Panic Attacks, Parental Buddy Aurinko, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sad Peter Nureyev, because i feel like it, my boy got himself stabbed a little bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24312931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thunderbottle/pseuds/thunderbottle
Summary: After a heist, Peter thinks it's a good idea to patch himself up. Buddy does not agree.
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko & Peter Nureyev
Comments: 12
Kudos: 122





	Butterfly Bandages

**Author's Note:**

> i've been craving more buddy and peter interactions for the last like... 37 years so i'm taking matters into my own hands. enjoy this little angsty romp

The heist had gone well. Juno had distracted their mark with an easy grace, Rita had taken down security cameras like it was her middle name, and Peter?

Well, Peter was alone in the Carte Blanche’s cramped bathroom trying to patch up an unfortunate knife wound. He had, of course, stolen the files and notebook that he was tasked to steal, but one of the guards had gotten him rather tripped up along the way. The heist had gone well, the heist went perfectly. He figured that if he repeated it enough times then the others would believe it too. None of them had noticed the slight shine of blood on the left side of his (fortunately black) dress shirt, so he was left to tend to his own wounds.

Peter took a deep breath and peeled his hand and a very bloody towel off of the wound.

It was shallow, luckily, but painful nonetheless. The guard’s blade had glided over the bottom two ribs and the whole cut stung like the knife was still cutting him. The towel kept the blood from going anywhere, but the half-dried tracks of blood kept dripping to life with every breath he took. His blood was the same color as the guard’s, gaudy and red as the martian sun. It felt nearly juvenile to say, but he was out of practice with killing. Muscle memory had done the job for him, of course, but in the aftermath, staring down at another dead body, it felt fresh all over again.

Peter thought absently about Juno. Maybe the ex-detective’s stubborn moral core was rubbing off on him.

If, perhaps, the thief had a bit more blood in his system or a slightly stronger constitution, he would have probably realized that he was doing nothing more than staring down at the wound absently, watching the blood run and not even reaching for the well-stocked first aid kit in the medicine cabinet. He also would have heard the swishing footsteps making their way down the hall before the knock on the door startled him out of his reverie.

“Darling, is everything alright?” Buddy’s voice was as calm and impossible to read as always. Peter fought back the fog in his mind, searching for a suitable answer.

Something inside of him felt blank. He thought about the guard again, a person who he had never met and would never know dead on the floor. The guard’s blood and his own stained his fingers like a brand.

“Pete, I’m coming in.” 

A small part of Peter Nureyev panicked, the rest of him felt nothing at all.

“Oh, darling…”

The bloody little bubble that he had sequestered himself in popped all at once. “Don’t worry, Captain, most of this blood isn’t mine.”

“Pete, I do believe that’s less comforting than you think it is.” Peter watched her approach in the mirror. She went slowly and carefully, like any sudden movement would scare him away. 

Distantly, he could feel fear coursing through him. Buddy was a talented enough criminal to sense it, he was sure, but he still didn’t allow any feeling to seep into his voice. “Would you mind fetching the medical kit for me?”

She didn’t mention that Peter should have been able to get it for himself. Buddy was diplomatic like that, allowing all of them their little neuroses. What he wasn’t expecting, of course, was for her not to hand the kit to him. 

Instead, she pushed herself up to sit on the counter next to him, opening the kit in her lap and flipping through the various materials.

“Captain?”

“Hush, Pete. Allow me a few of my maternal instincts, won’t you?” She didn’t look up from the kit, so he was free to process the quick flashes of confusion, hope, and fear that washed through him openly. 

As they sat quietly in the slightly bloody bathroom, Buddy tried not to broadcast any of her own feelings just as the thief processed his own. She had not anticipated, even with all her planning, how much she would care about this mess of a man. When they had regrouped at the Ruby 7, Peter had been shaking just enough for her mechanical eye to pick up on it. There was blood under his fingernails and a veiled look of horror behind his eyes.

When he had disappeared after their family meeting, Buddy knew that she would have to hunt him down to make sure everything was alright. 

As it turned out, Peter wasn’t alright. There was a fairly deep, six inch long cut over his ribs that looked like it hadn’t even begun to scab over. She held back a wince as she examined it, instructing her young companion to turn his left side toward her so she could tend to the injury. She wasn’t a talented medic like Vespa, but she could get by in a pinch. 

Sitting next to her, Peter was pretty sure he was 20% of the way into a panic attack. Buddy had maneuvered him so that his back was to the room, facing the mirror. He was shirtless, hurt, and felt more vulnerable than he had in years. His minute shaking was slowly turning into a constant tremor and his breathing was getting harder to control. He just barely contained his startled jump when Buddy laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.  
“Are you alright, darling?” 

“Just fine, Captain.”

He didn’t turn to meet her eye. He sat on the cold metal of the counter, bloody and exhausted, and shook. Peter knew that she saw right through him but couldn’t let his control slip. 

Buddy watched the man next to her and sighed. “You didn’t tell us the whole story at our meeting tonight, did you, Pete?”

Some juvenile part of him, a remnant of Brahma, flinched inwardly at her tone. “It’s not a good question if you already know the answer, don’t you think?”

“Who was it that you crossed blades with, then?”

“A guard, no one of importance.”

“I’m guessing your meeting did not go well.”

Before he could even think of an answer, his carefully tenuous control faltered. All the breath rushed out of his lungs before he could stop it. “No. No it didn’t.” The words were bitter and hopeless, sitting heavy in his throat. The panic he had been holding back came rushing towards him all at once and Peter felt exhausted and frantic all at once. 

“Breathe, Pete, stay with me.” 

At her direction, he gasped air back into his lungs holding it and spitting it out too fast, too _fast_. All he could see was the guard’s body, Mag’s body, and blood on the floor.

“That’s enough of that, I think. Come here, darling.” Buddy’s voice was warm and commanding, her hand on his shoulder gently pulling him closer. Feeling very much like a child, Peter hid his face in her shoulder. “If you want me to help, Peter, telling me what’s really bothering you is a good place to start. Something tells me that this isn’t just about a little bit of blood.”

He didn’t attempt a response, too busy trying to breathe evenly and keep himself from crying to think of something to say. 

He was succeeding, for the most part, until Buddy placed her free hand on the back of his head. All at once, the emotions he was desperately holding back demanded to be let out, to see the light of day. For the first time in a while, Peter cried.

Buddy, for all her preparedness, was lost as to what to do. She had expected Peter to be injured, she had even expected him to need reassurance, but sitting on the bathroom counter with a nameless thief crying into her shoulder was a bit out of left field.

“Oh, Pete, what are we going to do with you?”

The thief burrowed further into her shoulder and she couldn’t help but smile.

“It’s alright, darling, it’s alright.”

“It’s _not_.” Her smile faded a bit. That voice did not belong to Peter Ransom. It was bitter and more mature than Ransom’s, broken and real in a way that Ransom was not. She was suddenly and jarringly aware that she was hugging a stranger. 

“Darling…”

The thief pulled back from her shoulder, his face blotchy from crying. He was the same man, but he was holding himself differently. There was something determined about his expression, grim and resolute. When he didn’t say anything further, Buddy sighed. 

“This conversation can wait. Let’s get you patched up, Pete.” She was no longer sure of the name, but she said it anyways. She almost expected to see the thief to shift back into his ‘Ransom’ persona, but his expression didn’t change. If anything, he seemed to settle into this strange new personality further. He nodded silently and Buddy got to work. 

Cleaning the injury and bandaging it carefully went by in a blur. They sat together in silence until Buddy patted his shoulder, signalling that she had finished patching him up. As she stood to walk out of the bathroom, sensing that the thief wanted to be alone, he caught her arm. 

She turned to look at him, expecting an apology or thanks in that small, bitter voice. Instead, he met her gaze evenly and said: “Peter Nureyev.”

She didn’t have to ask what he meant. It was a name. It was a rather famous name, at least in her neck of the outer rim. She did her best not to react, just smiling kindly at the thief. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Pete.”

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in like two hours and didn't reread a word of it. bless this mess


End file.
